Book update from Japan

As I sit here on the floor at the Kansai International Airport (they've got to get more outlets near actual chairs here), I just heard from my publisher that the books have left the warehouse in Indiana, though I am not sure how long it takes for Amazon, etc. to receive and process the books. Several are already on their way to the house at the beach where we'll be staying in Oregon (one book was sent by FedEx and is already there). If you pre-ordered the book you may have received a reply that says to expect shipping in February. This can't be right. I love Amazon—they are a miracle of sorts—but I have found that they often get the dates wrong for new books. My hope is that pre-orders will be shipped during the holiday break sometime. I'll keep you updated when I hear some news about this. Two of the people who have seen the entire book are my editor Michael Nolan and cool blogger Pam Slim. Checkout what they say about the book. Their words are very kind, but they are not exactly unbiased in this case either.

The final push
The pictures below are from the night of November 20, the night we uploaded the entire book after final checks to the production people in the US. The 2GB InDesign file (a bit smaller compressed) was uploaded from Japan to the server in the USA after we made sure all the images and links were OK (very time consuming). After the publisher had all the files in late November there were still a few typos, etc. that were caught and corrected there before the files were sent to the printer.


Working at home on the cover before heading over to Mayumi's design studio a few blocks away.

Checking (again) for typos as design consultant Mayumi Nakamoto spends hours checking all the images and links.


Mayumi goes through every page checking images to make sure they are CMYK, etc.


Sample prints of the covers. Cover file was done in Illustrator.

Getting ready to get on the plane to work on tomorrow's presentation at the Stanford Alumni Center, then over to Duarte Design after that. So who needs sleep?

Update
Unbelievably, I have not slept yet (almost two days now...). But a great day. Stanford was wonderful and the Duarte event was fantastic. I was shocked: Just as I entered the party area of Duarte the publisher was there holding up my book--the actual book!--announcing to everyone that "Garr has not seen this yet" and how excited they are about the book, etc....then I walk in. Bam! I was shocked. A lot of presentation vips were there including two lead managers from Microsoft (PowerPoint), Slideshare, etc. Great people (more later including some awesome and funny pictures with the cool guys from Microsoft). Read about the night in a post here by communications guru Bert Decker.

Comments

[Kreshna Aditya]

NOOOO!!! :( I have pre-ordered your book and expected it to arrive early in January (I'm in Indonesia, btw). Guess I have to wait a little longer. I'm sure it will worth the waiting though. Congrats.

[Paul M.]

John, nice you gave us some background regarding your book preparations.

BTW, do you receive Starbucks vouchers for sneaking in their logo? :)

[raj]

garr...
thats great news .. iam in dubai
i had preordered it
amazon is saying 'Delivery estimate: January 9, 2008 - January 28, 2008'
shipping date of Dec 17th ...
that is great !! earlier it was mid feb

[Gabriele Barni]

it is amazing to see all the developing steps of your book .

btw : great news!

[andhapp]

Congrats... I have been looking forward to read the book hopefully next year...

[Reader]

Does Starbucks pay you to put their products in your pictures? :)

[Pamela Slim]

You deserve every bit of praise and gush Garr. I have been a PZ groupie ever since I stumbled on your site 2 years ago (when I just started my blog and was dipping my toes in this new world).

We need your voice among the crushing drone of incomprehensible charts and never-ending bullet points.

I think of birthing a book much like birthing a child. You could take the word "children" and replace it with "book" from Kalil Gibran's The Prophet:

"Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you, but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
..."

It will be fun to sit back and watch your book's journey. I know this much: it will change many people in unexpected ways.

[Garr]

Thanks for the comments everyone! And no, SB's doesn't pay me :-) We just drink the stuff a lot in the office (there's one down the street...well done every street actually!).

[Michael]

Garr, will you be doing any pre-book launch events while in Oregon? Or are you looking forward to some strict r&r?

[Julio]

So you used Adobe InDesign for the book uhm?, now I'm intrigued.. I should play around with the demo version since I never understood what InDesign was meant for.

Anyways, I just pre-ordered my copy of the book yesterday, gotta love the euro-dollar exchange ratio :)

[tMac]

Garr,

Can you post concerning a good source for InDesign "Book" templates? Another thought, any chance you might release a few key pages made available as a software template? Toc, Index, basic chapter set-ups with a few variations,etc. I think there is a large need for something like this.

Looking forward to diving in to the book!

Thanks,

Tim

[Joe Miller]

Garr,

Thrilling to hear the book will be out soon. Thanks for sharing your process, your wisdom, and significantly improving the world of presentation and public speaking! If you have a Denver book signing planned please post on the blog.

[Jeffrey]

My book just shipped according to Amazon. Hurray!

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